It used to be that the quality of infrastructure was measured by its lifespan. Water systems might last a century, and power plants at least half that. Those were measurements of solid assets, well worth the investment. But today, dependable infrastructure is just not enough. While it must be resilient and have an extended life cycle, now it must also be intelligent and communicate with other systems in ways that were unknown only a few years ago.

Together, community leaders are going to build a smart city, and that's going to take a whole number of players, from transportation, water, the electric grid, telecommunications, and from the public and private sectors to come together, said Fred Ellermeier, Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Smart Integrated Infrastructure for Black & Veatch. You'll be converging all of these systems into one they'll be working in harmony together. This changing landscape the convergence of multiple systems has led to the creation of Black & Veatch's Smart Integrated Infrastructure (SII) business. As the smart cities movement sweeps across the globe, it will change the way utilities view the future. 'smart Integrated Infrastructure starts with infrastructure that has built-in intelligence. This intelligent infrastructure produces high volumes of data that provides substantial opportunities to be leveraged, Ellermeier said.

The next dimension of SII is data analytics, and we've built a smart analytics platform called ASSET360 that is already making life easier for utilities and communities. ASSET360 gathers and analyzes vast amounts of data to help users understand their system's behavior and make more informed decisions. The cloud-based platform applies a wide range of math and visual tools to assure that the needed actions are identified and taken. It eliminates the guesswork. You find out what is going on in your system that you would not be able to detect with the natural eye or the natural mind, Ellermeier said.